


vignettes

by orphan_account



Category: Bleach
Genre: Drug Use, Heroin, and then post death, headcanon heavy, its very soc this is your only warning, pre death, yes theres mcd but not story-ending mcd know what i mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 18:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1397887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing has ever been easy for him. The forces of fairness would simply not allow it. Not that he's complaining, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. O. The Matador

His life, or at least certain very specific parts of it should be far, far easier than they are, but Szayel Granz is a self-admitted terrible person and the world is a fair place, and so his brother, his brother, his smug smirking brat of a brother is put there for the sole purpose of making what would have, in a perfect world, gone smoothly into a terrible clusterfuck nightmare of complications.

Nothing, he reflected with the end of his own tourniquet between his teeth, could ever be easy for him. The forces of the earth, and fairness, and highs that came without terrifying, twisted hallucinations would simply not allow it. Not even slightly.

Everything would be better if not for Yylfordt. Yylfordt is a liability. Yylfordt is a risk. Yylfordt is a mistake in the purest and least subtextual sense of the word. Yylfordt is a bull, and Szayel is obviously, unavoidably, inescapably red. His task, then, is to dance around his older brother looking dashing and let him think he has the upper hand, and then wound him and make him as angry, miserable, and hopeless as possible while reveling in every second. Like with bullfighting, there is always the possibility with Yylfordt that he will end up gored, but it's easy enough to put out of his mind when he's sick or high or not immediately being reminded of it, and with all that time subtracted, it doesn't constitute nearly the warning it should. 

When he is Szayel, he is boring, but when he puts on his red and starts bullfighting, he is Apollo -- or, butchered by his accent, Ah-poor-row. Bullfighting, swinging his cape and avoiding Yylfordt while getting just what he wants from him, is an indescribable high. The high he gets from heroin is a very, very close second, all the better by the fact that he doesn't have to worry about getting gored once he's got it, only immediately before.

Then again, he wouldn't really mind getting gored, he thinks. Not anymore. If no one gores him, he'll gore himself, and if someone tries, he'll do it anyway just to spite them.

It's been nearly half an hour since he evaded all threat of Yylfordt, and he is on the hard floor of his shit sty of an apartment with his back against two hard walls. 

Another high, another hole in his arm just halfway up, and he is still not gored.


	2. I. The Martyr

"I hope," he drawls, tongue fat in his mouth, "you aren't calling collect."  
   
The familiar voice on the other line asks what's wrong with him, where he is, what he was thinking, and then, at length, why calling collect would be a problem.  
   
"I'm sick," he announces in the petulant voice of a child, shifting to lie on his side with the blocky phone between his ear and the floor. It digs into his chin and cheek and temple, but it's better than counting the ceiling cracks and, every so often, choking on his own vomit.  
   
Sick in the head, the voice tells him. It stops. Szayel stops, too. It asks him, sick with what?   
   
"Immune-oh-something. Everyone's got it now," he snickers in the tone reserved for mocking their parents.  
   
Are you high, asks the voice in the most scathing way it knows.  
   
"Very," he tells it emphatically.  
   
How are you high, deadpans the voice, when I have not seen you in person in days.  
   
The pout in Szayel's voice is exaggerated, but there is a raw edge to his tone. "I sucked a lot of dick. _A lot_ of dick, Yylfordt. Someone wouldn't get me what I wanted, and I told him I would get it myself if he didn't, and I did."  
   
The voice is silent. The voice is putting more quarters into the pay phone. Scrape-roll-clang. Scrape-roll-clang. If he smashes his ear against the receiver, he can hear the blood rushing in his head harmonize with his brother's muttered curses. Like a seashell at the beach. He's never been to a beach, to a proper one. He's never going to go.  
   
The voice asks, what the fuck are you doing. So you're sick. It won't kill you, not for years.  
   
"Mm-hm," says Szayel. "It won't kill me at all."  
   
You're very high, says the voice. Szayel rolls over onto his back and puts the phone on speaker.  
   
"It won't kill me, because."  
   
Because of what. A beat. Because of what? The voice is getting irritated. Szay-- Ap--  
   
"Don't call me that."   
   
Fucking Christ, Szayel, because of what?!  
   
"Because," he says, and begins coughing.  
   
The voice goes quiet. Because you will first.  
   
"Mm-hm."  
   
What the fuck is wrong with you?  
   
"Yylfordt," he whines, "you're ruining my high."  
   
You are going to kill yourself right now rather than deal with what you got yourself into--  
   
"Yes."  
   
What the fuck is wrong with you?  
   
"Hey, Yylfordt?" His hands are numb.  
   
What.  
   
"Fuck you," he tells him curtly, hanging up the phone.  
   
Szayel Granz is found dead of an overdose the next morning. There is a phone next to the body with the antenna snapped in half.  
 


	3. II. The Mirror

His official job is research, but that is not half of what he does. His unofficial job is cleaning, in the sense he used to watch mobster movies about but slightly different, because when Szayel Aporro “cleans”, he is left overwhelmingly enriched by the experience, usually by a pair of eyes or kidneys or lungs, all labeled and jarred and perfectly preserved.

His unofficial job also entails pretending he was not the first to see through the beautifully polished shit Aizen was handing them all and calling preprocessed diamonds; technically correct, but not what any of them were promised by a long shot. Szayel Aporro is a connoisseur of shit, and he knows when what he is being handed is nothing more than a steaming, fetid crock of the stuff. That is not what Aizen wants to hear. Aizen wants to hear thank you, Lord and Master, I am forever in your debt.

His third unofficial job is telling Aizen what he wants to hear, and he has to give Yylfordt's memory grudging thanks for all the practice bullfighting.

He is given a pair of glasses he cannot take off, and a crisp white uniform, and a tower and a lab, and, endowed with spite and honeyed words and an absolutely killer pair of bedroom eyes, it comes to no one's surprise that he is almost universally hated, least of all his own. The closest thing he has to a friend is Nnoitra, who is an idiot and a brute and possesses more balls than brains and very few of either, and who boasts of his sexual prowess more frequently than Szayel ever thought possible. ( The term 'friend' is applied loosely; here it means 'someone that has not tried to kill him yet'. ) 

It is only after Yylfordt turns up again and gets in good with the Sexta that Szayel truly has the opportunity to spread his wings; the enemy of his enemy is his friend, after all, and the Sexta has no shortage of enemies.

Szayel Aporro's fourth and final unofficial job is one of his own imposition; there is just so much wrong with the slice of the world he has been given,so he sets about fixing it. It is his, and he is perfect, and by extension, it must be as well. If there are a few eggs, or necks, or hearts broken in the process, that is not his problem. Nothing will ever be his problem unless he fails to tell Aizen -- it is Lord Aizen, now, because his ego was evidently not stroked enough -- what he wants to hear, and he has no intention of stopping. 

Szayel Aporro amasses a truly impressive collection of organs, and, later, a truly impressive collection of unconditionally obedient artificial life forms. He decides that he deserves it.  Even the greatest matadors must eventually retire and enjoy the fruits of their labors. 

The only thing he is waiting on now is his bull's head mounted on the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is very headcanon-heavy so i'm going to do my best to explain. szayel died during the aids epidemic, he was a heroin addict, he was infected as a result of using dirty needles, yylfordt was, due to circumstances, his supplier, rather than letting the disease kill him he overdosed, either out of cowardice at a slow and likely painful death or out of a need for control; likely both. everything else is going to be left to the imagination because i am truly terrible.

**Author's Note:**

> this was my first time writing stream-of-consciousness in a loooong time. i got two rounds of edits but i'm giving up on this now because it's sat in my to-be-posted for way too long??? i might revisit this but i probably won't. this isn't so much my baby as it is some foul gnawing thing that never grew out of its teething phase, and i want it gone.


End file.
